


there Minos stands, hideous and growling, examining the sins of each newcomer

by houselannister



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drugs, F/M, Suicide, VALONQAR UP IN THIS CLUB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:23:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houselannister/pseuds/houselannister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"After 1962, Hollywood changes; the golden age fades into copper, blackened copper, rotten copper. Many argue there will never be a star as bright as Monroe, nor as doomed."</p>
<p>Lannister Hollywood AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there Minos stands, hideous and growling, examining the sins of each newcomer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the got-exchange livejournal community.
> 
> For Michele.

**Prologue**  
  
  
After Marilyn's death, Hollywood loses its shade of gold. The ugliness is obvious in the dirty motel rooms, empty bottles of Elavil and broken glasses that smell of rum, the strong stuff. Others die after Marilyn, but few people ever learn their names. They're ghosts of an industry too big to accept stars that don't shine as bright and violent.  _Crash and burn_  is the only way Hollywood knows, the only lives that are remembered are those that end too soon. Starlets die in empty beds, tangled in rumpled sheets, phone receivers in their hands and too much sadness in their stomachs, mixed with booze and sleeping pills, sometimes with cocaine in their systems. But they never shine as bright as Marilyn, so Hollywood doesn't care.  
  
  
After 1962, Hollywood changes; the golden age fades into copper, blackened copper, rotten copper. Many argue there will never be a star as bright as Monroe, nor as doomed.  
  
  
Tywin Lannister launches Lannister Studios in 1968. The first movie is nothing short of revolutionary, introducing a reckless use of violence and sex that is both frowned upon and envied greatly by most. The family business that hides behind the gates of the Casterly Mansion sparks the interest of Hollywood at large. The father holds the strings, puts his eldest before the camera and the middle golden child behind it. No one sees the youngest son during production, but everyone knows he's the mind behind the scripts.  
  
  
In 1970, a twenty-five year old Jaime Lannister wins his first Academy Award for accomplishments in directing, for the movie King. Later, during the ceremony, his twin sister Cersei Lannister accepts the award for Best Leading Actress. Some eyebrows are raised that night, the air full of cynical whispers:  _The movie was not all that_. But Hollywood has lost its original golden glow, and it shines with Lannister crimson instead.  
  
  
In late 1970, barely six months after the Academy Awards are given to his children, Tywin Lannister is the richest man on the West Coast. Before him was Aerys Targaryen of Targaryen Inc., whose sudden death sends shockwaves across the country. Aerys Targaryen was not loved; rumors of insanity surrounded him, and Tywin Lannister's power thirst pales in comparison.  
  
  
(Or so everyone thinks.)  
  
  
In the end, Hollywood welcomes the new puppet master with open arms. Everyone is quick to lick his boots, and Tywin Lannister is more than content to let them.  
  
  
Jaime Lannister is the youngest Academy Award winning director in history, much to Sydney Pollack's absolute dismay. But the whispers always follow him, wondering how much talent has to do with his success, wondering just what the price of an Oscar is these days. However much, they're sure Tywin Lannister's son has enough in his bank account to cover the expense.  
  
  
Tyrion Lannister is nothing like his brother and every bit his littler copy at the same time. Whereas Jaime Lannister is tall and handsome, his little brother is just that: little. Those he mocks call him  _the dwarf writer_ , those he pays call him  _Giant of Lannister_. His arrogance is as great as that of his brother, and his cunning reminiscent of Tywin. But where Jaime’s artistic talent can very rightfully be called into question, Tyrion’s cannot be questioned by even his greatest critics. Jaime Lannister knows when to yell “Cut!” and where to aim the camera to get a good shot, but Tyrion Lannister knows what words to put in the actors' mouths, and that, everyone knows, is ten times more than Jaime Lannister will ever be able to do.  
  
  
Cersei Lannister shines brighter than all of them, a supernova in a sky where people thought no such brightness could ever be seen again. And it hadn’t been seen since Marilyn. Every strand of her hair a ray of sunshine in itself, in her eyes the green of a thousand emeralds. As tall as her twin brother, and every bit as fierce and unrelenting, Cersei Lannister opens a door that Hollywood had locked very carefully. She burns intensely.  _The woman is the money_. Not Tywin Lannister, safe behind his big mahogany desk. Not Jaime Lannister, safe behind his heavy camera. Not Tyrion Lannister, safely hidden behind his books and papers and pretty words.  
  
  
 _Looking at her, one might wonder if Marilyn ever truly died_ , a forty-six year old Marlon Brando tells the paparazzi one evening. When asked about the statement, Cersei Lannister smiles and shrugs. “I am stronger than Marilyn.”  
  
  
They hate her one day, love her the next, only to go back to hate once more. Cersei Lannister plays with them; it will be years before they realize that she held them all in the palm of her perfectly manicured hand.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Casterly Mansion, Burbank, September 1985**  
  
  
Some secrets are meant to never see the light, and hidden as they are, they grow heavier and heavier and destroy everything around them. Perhaps it's the post-coital bliss, or the fact that he's just coming down from his high after snorting two lines of cocaine earlier that night, but Jaime feels philosophical. He is on his sister's bed, wrapped in his sister's sheets, his head against his sister's headboard and his arms sprawled against his sister's pillows. He can see his sister's cunt, too, as she bends over the table and makes a line -  _another one?_ \- and his cock stirs again. She is wild as an animal, completely out of control, and he wants her, he wants her  _again_ , but Cersei is too busy making perfect, parallel, thin white lines to notice his eyes following the curve of her ass. She inhales sharply, and his eyes snap shut: if he had the strength to get up, he might join her.  
  
  
When she turns around, she's pinching her nose, wiping the white powder off her nostrils, and as unkempt as she looks, Jaime wants her all the same.  
  
  
(He knows that he will want her when old age and decay took possession of her body, too.)  
  
  
Her hair is a mess, golden but all over the place, and her dark liner has left black smudges under her eyes. She doesn't look like an actress; she looks like a rock-star, he wagers.  
  
  
 _She doesn't look like Marilyn at all now._  
  
  
Her footing is unsure as she makes her way back to the bed, jumping on it with a grin that could be mistaken for amusement or childlike wonder. But it's not; she's just not fucking here at all. Jaime envies her. _Maybe I could use one more hit, after all._  
  
  
She is on him before he can move, straddling him and kissing him and biting and digging her fingers right in his ribcage; she scratches and draws blood, but Jaime grabs a fistful of her hair and kisses her in the same fashion. He hurts her too, curling his fingers over her hips and squeezing so hard that she flinches and pulls back. “Asshole,” she says.  
  
  
“Sell out,” he replies, lifting his ass from the mattress and grinding his hips against her groin, cursing the sheets between them, a hindrance.  _Obnoxious_ , he thinks, and he moves his hand to her curls (she's golden at the juncture of her thighs too) and she moans and smirks and pushes down against his fingers.  
  
  
“Suck my cock,” she snaps back, but then she says his name,  _Jaime, fuck, Jaime,_ and that's the only sign that she's not completely fucked up just yet. She will be, before the night is over. There's too much coke on the table, and too many hours still to go in the night.  
  
  
“You don't have one.”  
  
  
He doesn't know when or how Cersei managed to get rid of the sheets, but somehow she did, and her fingers wrap around his erection as she grips it tight, almost painfully tight. Jaime squirms and his hand shoots out to grasp her wrist and they both still. “That's because you have mine,” she replies, tilting her head to the side.  
  
  
She strokes him, with his fingers still holding onto her wrist, in some fucked up, twisted, shared masturbation. Cersei's eyes are trained on his cock, as if it were hers indeed, as if she were touching herself. There's fascination mixed with hunger in the way she bites her bottom lip and starts stroking just that bit faster. Like it's her orgasm and not his. His eyes roll back and he throws his head against the headboard, breathing heavily. She's skilled; when he comes, she wraps her lips around the head of his dick and swallows. It’s ironic, in a way, how she's used to cleaning up after his mess.  
  
  
Only in the aftermath, when his breathing evens out and his muscles relax, only then does he see the glint in her eyes, the mischief and purpose there, telling a story he knows all too well. She crawls up his body, nestles up beside him and stares deeply into his eyes. “I want to be Cleopatra.”  
  
  
 _Ah. Of course._  
  
  
His sister is a queen in many ways, to him most of all. Perhaps even a goddess, a marble statue as he looks at her in this very moment, bathing in the pale white moonlight that filters through the curtains. “Why are you telling me this? You know I have no say in the matter.”  
  
  
The thing with cocaine is that it makes his sister angry more than it makes her happy. It's not a surprise when she pulls away, her face a mask of indignation. “What? I don't. You know that,” he insists, because it's true. It's not like he decided the young Tyrell girl would be more appropriate for the role. That had been  _Tywin's_  decision, in order to keep the Tyrell family on heel. Little did it matter that Margaery Tyrell has nothing,  _nothing_ , of the Egyptian queen. Mostly, she lacks the experience for the role. She is barely seventeen.  
  
  
Of course, Cersei looks nothing like Cleopatra, either.  
  
  
That night, she tries to fuck her way into his mind, to change it, and, by proxy, her father's mind.  
  
  
The morning after, Margaery Tyrell is still to be Cleopatra, and Jaime knows his sister fears that her sunset draws nearer and nearer every day.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Ouarzazate, Morocco, November 1985**  
  
  
Jaime leaves Los Angeles early in October with a crew of one hundred and fifty actors, cameramen, visual and sound technicians. The night before their departure, Tyrion throws a party to see him off, but Cersei does not attend. He tries her cellphone a couple of times during the night, but she always hangs up. Finally, he manages to speak to her in the morning, as the crew starts boarding. “You're nothing to me,” his sister hisses into the phone, and he stares at the device long after she cuts the connection off. He drops his phone into a trash bin and decides that two can play that game; if she wants to give him the cold shoulder because of  _Cleopatra_ , then he sure as fuck won't chase her around.  
  
  
Ouarzazate is a painting come alive, and Jaime almost forgets everything about the golden queen he left in Burbank. Almost. Sometimes a landscape will remind him of her when the sun shines a little too bright, or if the sunset is bloody red. He thinks of her at night the most, when he is alone, not surrounded by screaming staff and patronizing executives. The moonlight casts a lonely white glow onto his white sheets,  _empty_ , and he remembers his sister's skin, and his sister's nails raking down his back, and he misses her.  
  
  
(He is not whole without her. But behind the camera he feels like God, and that soothes the stinging wound of her absence.)  
  
  
Margaery Tyrell can't act for shit. Not yet. She has potential, and a face that punches a hole into the camera, but so does Cersei, and Jaime can't help thinking his sister would be better at this. In November, a month into shooting, he Tyrell girl burst into tears and tells him that her brother, Loras Tyrell, was killed in Los Angeles. Shot in the streets, a merciless warning in the shape of one fast, clean bullet from a speeding car. Jaime calls Tywin that night, and listens as he talks about treacherous roses. Mace Tyrell was always too proud, and Loras Tyrell just happened to pick the wrong afternoon to hang out with his father.  
  
  
He asks after Cersei, too proud to call her but too desperate to ignore her existence the way she deserves.  
  
  
Tywin tells him she's getting worse.  
  
  
Jaime knows it's the drugs.  
  
  
The crew loves Ouarzazate, but by the end of the month they pack their bags and get ready to move to the next location. Margaery Tyrell is a living corpse, thinner by the day, and Jaime Lannister grows frustrated as every scene requires a fourth take, a fifth one, sometimes up to a tenth, in order to get any hint of emotion from her. The movie shapes up to be a disaster, and Margaery is denied permission to go back home for her brother's funeral. Jaime seldom calls his father anymore, and part of him wishes he weren’t in the middle of this, holding Margaery Tyrell hostage in Morocco while Tywin plays his cards back at home.  
  
  
(He wants to go home, really. Wants to tell his sister he is sorry, and that she is a fucking nightmare but right all the same, to kiss her, make her better, make her all right again. He knows he can fix her.)  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Casablanca, Morocco, December, 1985**  
  
  
When Tyrion hops off the plane, Jaime’s chest feels lighter, like a rock has been lifted off it just at the sight of him waddling down the runway in a leather jacket and a pair of sunglasses. Jaime thinks that his brother could have been a movie star, if only he’d been taller. He greets him with a pat on the shoulder and a wide smile, but Tyrion sees right through him and sucks air in through gritted teeth.  
  
  
“That bad?” he asks as they make their way back to the Jeep.  
  
  
“Worse.”  
  
  
Jaime tells him about Margaery Tyrell being unfit for the role and complains about Tywin, about the fucking heat and about the food, too spiced for his palate. He leaves Cersei out of the discussion, and he doesn’t tell Tyrion just how much he misses her. Cersei doesn’t like Tyrion, and Tyrion certainly doesn’t like Cersei, and there he is, between a rock and a hard place. The words are on the tip of his tongue,  _I just need her to be me again_ , but he decides that it might be inappropriate.  
  
  
Tyrion listens carefully, nods when he’s supposed to nod, jokes about the women of Morocco being sweet treats for the eye and the cock. But when he finally falls silent, Jaime knows that something is wrong.  
  
  
“Cersei was arrested.”  
  
  
The Jeep doesn’t halt, but Jaime’s hand is sweaty on the wheel; he fights against the urge to take a U-turn and head straight back to the airport. “Why?” he asks instead, eyes fixed on the road as he avoids an old man trying to cross the road. The cotton of his shirt is soaked through; he thinks it’s the heat, but it’s probably because he’s in a panic.  
  
  
“Crashed dad’s Corvette into a tree last night,” Tyrion explains with a smug grin. “When they arrived on the spot she was half out of it, completely wasted. She is a mess, Jaime. Dad got her out, but she’s to stand trial for DUI next week.”  
  
  
Tyrion speaks with a tone of satisfaction mixed with pity, and although Jaime hates it, he cannot blame him. His siblings have made each other’s lives hell for as long as he can remember, and Tyrion’s smugness almost makes sense. “She was asking for you, apparently. How did you not know this?”  
  
  
Jaime thinks back of the crew, in the morning, eyeing him and whispering as he walked by. It all makes sense now, the hushed voices, the not-so-subtle passing of newspapers. Jaime doesn’t read the paper: he hates the world he lives in as it is, and he has no need for more kindling to feed his cynicism.  
  
  
“I never did like Morocco,” Jaime says, grinning as wide as the pain will let him. Tyrion is looking at him, just looking and taking in his words. He wonders now just how much his little brother knows of him and Cersei and the true nature of their relationship. “The sun fucks up my complexion.” His hands are itching to take a turn and go back, say fuck-all with the movie and catch the first plane.  
  
  
His sister needs him.  
  
  
But then, Tyrion speaks again.  
  
  
“You know, she’s been fucking Osney Kettleblack.” His brother sounds victorious, almost triumphant when he says that, but somewhere deeper he can perceive the same pity Tyrion had expressed for Cersei, only this time, it’s for him, for Jaime.  
  
  
 _You great fool._  
  
  
They don’t speak again until they reach the hotel, and his brother is welcomed like with all the fanfare befitting a star. Jaime stands at the periphery with a bleak look on his face and his fists clenched at his sides. He thinks of Cersei, and he thinks of Osney Kettleblack, and he thinks of Cersei and Osney Kettleblack together. The bile rises up to his throat. He excuses himself, goes up to his room and purges the contents of his stomach until he feels empty.  
  
  
Tyrion is in Morocco for a week. Jaime sees him talking to Margaery Tyrell, who barely stares back with a dignified look of nonchalance. His brother feels more at home here than Jaime ever will, and it only gets worse when Tywin calls him late at night.  
  
  
“They let her go with a fine and the promise of rehab.” There is no concern or affection in Tywin Lannister’s voice. Jaime nearly spits out the truth, that his sister cannot be fixed, and that she will make as much a mess of rehab as she does everything else. But he keeps the thoughts at bay.  
  
  
“Take a week. She wants to see you.”  
  
  
 _She’s been fucking Osney Kettleblack._  
  
  
“No,” he says. “I’ll finish the movie.”  
  
  
He’s only just hung up when someone knocks on his door. Jaime closes his eyes and hopes that his brother will go away if he ignores him (the sight of Tyrion reminds him of Cersei, and he doesn’t want to think about Cersei just now), but instead, the knocking becomes more insistent. When he opens the door, however, it’s not Tyrion. The woman before him is tall, with a dark ebony complexion and long hair that’s darker still. Her eyes are two pools of charcoal in which Jaime can almost see his reflection.  
  
  
“Your brother sent me,” the woman purrs, tilting her head to the side and leaning against the doorframe.  
  
  
For all his cleverness, Tyrion has lost any grasp of subtlety over the years. Jaime looks at the woman and can read his brother’s message; she’s the opposite of Cersei in everything, dark where Cersei had been pale, thin where Cersei had been curved. She is not Cersei, and that’s why he slams the door in her face that night.  
  
  
He doesn’t want Cersei, not tonight.  
  
  
 _She’s been fucking Osney Kettleblack._  
  
  
However, he wants no one  _but_  her for the rest of his life, and therein lies his problem.  
  
  
…  
  
  
In the end, Margaery Tyrell is a surprise. Jaime decides she might be the best Cleopatra Hollywood has ever seen.  
  
  
(Better than anything his sister could have been.)  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Burbank, California, April 1986**  
  
  
He steps on American soil late at night, and even though it’s not nearly as hot as it was in Morocco, he is suffocating. Every breath feels like inhaling water, filling his lungs until he doesn’t know if he’s breathing or drowning. The crew dissipates, scatters across the airport, and soon enough he is alone, waiting for his suitcase, the last one to come around the carousel.  
  
  
“You did a good job.”  
  
  
He turns around, surprised because he was sure he was alone, and when he sees Brienne Tarth, he narrows his eyes. She’s a producer who worked for the Baratheon production company before his father snatched her, and she hates his guts.  
  
  
“Did I?” he asks with more than a little hostility. “Wasn’t it…a butchered juvenile attempt? I seem to recall you saying that out loud more than once.”  
  
  
She is taller than he is, a beast of a woman, and not a pretty one at that. But she has brains, and he hates that in her, because he knows if he let her anywhere near the camera, she would do a much better job than he ever could. She’s not phased by his comment, responding with a laugh. “I did. But it turned out to be less terrible than I thought it would be.”  
  
  
For a brief moment, he lets himself forget what awaits him at home.  
  
  
“Thank you. Now get out of my sight - I can’t stand to look at you one minute longer.”  
  
  
She leaves without a word, and Jaime watches her go – there is no class or elegance in the way her shoulders slouch, nor any beauty on her face, but Jaime thinks she’s twice the person he will ever be, and it’s a humbling thought. He grabs his bag, pulls it over his shoulder and walks out. LAX is beautiful at night...beautiful and empty.  
  
  
His father does not pick him up, but a driver does, and Jaime is glad he doesn’t have to drive. He drank too much wine on the plane, and his vision is blurred. As are his thoughts. The car rides through the streets of Los Angeles, and he sees his sister in every reflection, staring back at him.  
  
  
Jaime Lannister has never been afraid in his life. He has been upset, to be sure....and confused, and angry. But fear is a stranger with whom he has never danced, and as he feels those cold hands closing around his waist for the first time, he decides that he loathes the feeling. The car hits a bump and he shakes himself out of it, willing his own mind to snap out of the trance, but it does nothing to ease a journey that feels more and more like a fucking green mile. For every meter, he is one step closer to his sister, and he is so fucking afraid of what he will find that he considers stopping the car.  
  
  
(He remembers almost doing the same, months before, overcome with the urge to drive to the Moroccan airport and return to her. It’s a stark contrast. Now, all he wants is to run from her. If he doesn’t see her, he won’t have to bear witness to the destruction of his most precious possession. If he doesn’t see her ever again, he will be able to remember her golden, bathing in the pale moonlight. She will be a marble statue in the temple of his mind, an idol for prayer. She will be bright and beautiful and untainted.)  
  
  
( _Perfect._ )  
  
  
It’s a thirty-minute drive to Casterly Mansion, not nearly enough time to think up sweet lies and justifications. She called for him, whispered his name through known channels (their father, their brother), but every time her voice reached out, he shut it down, ignored it because  _she’s been fucking Osney Kettleblack_  rang far louder in his mindspace. He realizes now that he should have swallowed his pride and answered her call – but how does a Lannister swallow his pride, when pride is all he has left? “Fuck,” he murmurs, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hands. He could sleep for a century and by the time he wakes up it will all be gone, forgotten.  
  
  
The car rides up the driveway slowly, as if fearful that it might disturb the peacefulness that surrounds it. The night is dark ( _and full of terrors_ , he thinks, remembering a movie, something, somewhere) and the moon doesn’t shine quite as bright as it did back in Morocco. The mansion is enveloped in a serene obscurity, thick as a blanket ( _as a shroud_ ). When he steps out of the car, he sees the single light glowing from his father’s window, and he sighs deeply, knowing it’s too late to have that conversation. Or, perhaps, too soon.  
  
  
The keys get stuck in the hole, and Jaime thinks it’s the universe warning him against entering. But he tries again, because deep inside him, his blood – his heart, really – sings a different tune. It calls out for what’s inside those walls almost as much as his mind calls out for a quick escape. Jaime has followed his heart for much longer, and it’s despite all the warnings that go off inside his brain that he steps in at last, dropping his bag in the hallway. Someone will pick it up, eventually. He has business to attend to tonight.  
  
  
Tywin is probably expecting him, but Jaime decides to ignore that. He knows that he’ll have to answer for it in the morning, when his father asks him why he did not come to his bedroom upon returning. He’ll make something up, say he was tired, say he was piss-drunk, say he collapsed onto his bed and forgot decency and courtesy. He has lied to his father before – they have all lied to Tywin: him, Cersei, Tyrion, and the whole fucking city.  
  
  
He climbs the steps of the big marble staircase, and suddenly he misses his mother, who he hasn’t thought of in years. It was easier to miss her when he was a boy, but as he grew, the memories became more distant with each passing day...and more painful. Eventually, he’d opted for feigned indifference, a defense mechanism to shield himself from the  _what ifs_. What if Joanna had been alive? Would he be a better man? Would Cersei have been able to help herself? Would Tyrion have known more love, more affection? Would they be happy, if his mother were with them? Would he feel anything but the gripping void that threatens to claim him with every step he takes toward his sister’s bedroom?  
  
  
The door opens without a sound, and he feels like a ghost, stumbling upon a life he should not be allowed to witness anymore. A life that is his as much as hers, a life that belongs to him on principle.  _I held your foot_ , he thinks, his eyes falling on the sleeping form on the mattress, facing away from him -  _I refused to let you go_. He regrets it all, regrets not coming back sooner, regrets letting her cry for help go unheard when he knew he was the only one who could help her, the only one maybe, maybe, from whom she could accept help. She is what she is (a vague shadow, a roar in the night that no one stops to hear), and it’s his fault as well. He should have listened when he had the chance.  
  
  
He kicks off his shoes and walks up to the bed, and if she hears him ,she gives no sign. She’s a statue, and he is growing tired of watching her back when all he wants to see is her eyes, when he wants to tell her that he’s sorry, that they can fix this.  
  
  
“You’re alive.”  
  
  
At last she speaks, and Jaime halts, sitting on his heels and studying the perfect curve that peeks from under the sheets, mesmerized for a moment at that voice he hasn’t heard in so long.  _You’re nothing to me._ They come rushing back, the last words she ever spoke to him, and he knows something is stirring inside him, anger and rage and the urge to grab her by the hair and tell her that she cannot push him away because they are forever, whether they want it or not, their destinies determined on the day they were conceived as a single soul to be split into different bodies.  
  
  
“Does that bother you?” he asks. His voice is as hard as the rest of him, a hardness that extends itself to every end of his body, seeping into every fiber of him like cancer, metastasizing black and unstoppable. Malicious.  
  
  
“Yes.”  
  
  
If she had hit him, square in the jaw, it would have hurt infinitely less. But his sister is cruel, and she uses her words the same way his father does, and his little brother, the way he never managed to master. He feels like a rookie attempting a game in which Cersei is masterfully trained, while lacking all the skills. He’s silent, staring at her white skin because it’s all she offers to him, as she refuses to turn around and let him see just how deep the wound cuts. Words can mask, words can conceal, words can hide, but Jaime Lannister has read his sister’s eyes far better and for longer than anyone else. She knows this much, and he knows that’s why she doesn’t turn around. As long as she doesn’t see him, it’s easier. He asks himself if she thinks of him with the same disgust she directs at Tyrion, and the idea terrifies him to his core. It’s that unknown dread that makes him move, grab her by the shoulder and shove her down against the mattress. He towers over her, and he sees her, really sees her, and he sees himself and all of his mistakes and his voice is weak when he finds it again.  
  
  
“You wish me dead, sister?” His fingers grip her shoulders, the whole of his body weight pinning her in place, and he doesn’t stop to think that he must be hurting her. He wants his fingernails to tear the skin they dent, he wants to feel the blood trickling down his fingers because she belongs to him, all of her, and if he was wrong in not listening to her, then she was wrong to think that she could be so careless with herself, the sacred possession that belongs to them both.  
  
  
 _She’s been fucking Osney Kettleblack_.  
  
  
“It would be easier to accept your death than to live knowing that you weren’t by my side when I needed you the most.”  
  
  
Jaime can count all of his blessings in the green of her eyes, and he knows she has the right of it.  _You left me first,_ he wants to yell in her face,  _you sent me away when I couldn’t give you what you wanted_. Even as he thinks that, he recognizes the childishness of it all. It’s not a rock big enough to hide him, and there is no sand in the world warm enough to provide refuge for his head.  
  
  
She fights him at first, but he takes her that night. He holds her wrists firmly above her head, keeping her from lunging forward, and he kisses her until she’s silent, kisses her until she’s pulling him forward instead of pushing him back. Her teeth leave marks on his neck, just as his nails left little red scratches on her, and when he looks at her, when he’s impossibly buried inside her, enveloped in everything that she is, there is a crippling sense of finality that makes him shiver. He sees a monster in her, and sees a monster in himself, and sees the biggest monster of all in the two of them together.  
  
  
There comes a moment when the monsters need rest, and Jaime Lannister has never felt more tired.  
  
  
They both find their climaxes in silence. They shudder, Cersei’s back arches, her legs tighten around him as his legs tremble, but neither whispers the other’s name. It’s holy, and sacred, and tainted by their actions. They handle it with the helplessness of picking up shards of broken china, knowing all the while glue won’t work, that it will never again be whole. Cersei sees the tears, he knows she sees them, and perhaps that’s why she smiles so cruelly.  
  
  
He rests beside her, his face buried in her neck, and when his fingers trail up her side and halt at her throat, she doesn’t flinch. Her eyes are trained on the ceiling, angry, a storm raging behind them, all war and fury and destruction.  
  
  
“I am sorry,” he whispers.  
  
  
She tries to move then, to turn around and look at him - she even tries to speak, but his hand presses down until he feels the air leaving her lungs and the blood rushing through every vein, the life within her draining away, his life as much as hers.  _How could you?_  
  
  
“Jaime?”  
  
  
He presses harder, and he buries his face into her hair. He understands her now; it will be easier if he doesn’t look at her. His fingers wrap fully around the column of her throat, and they feel alien as they perform the act, this filthy act for which he still cannot take responsibility.  _It’s a mercy_ , he tells himself,  _for the both of us_. But he hides all the same, hugging her body to him just as tightly as he wrapped his fingers around her neck, blocking the air. In depriving her of oxygen, he feels, perversely, as if he’s claiming the very air for his own. He feels the life, her life, in him, because it’s his,  _his_ , and she never should have given it to anyone else. He is reclaiming her, purging her, wiping her clean of the stains she allowed to taint their precious treasure.  
  
  
His eyes snap shut when he hears the rattling, and Cersei claws at his wrist, fighting for a life that she is not ready to relinquish. In a last, desperate delusion, he is proud of her; in these brief seconds that remain to her, he feels Cersei again, the Cersei whose foot he clung to when they were pulled from their mother’s womb. Her legs kick the sheets, kick his shins. There’s a wetness that reaches his thumb, a whispered “Please,” and then nothing more.  
  
  
Jaime doesn’t let go of her. He opens his eyes slowly and steals a glance at her, half expecting her to be staring back at him with the smile he knows, telling him it was all a nightmare. But Cersei’s eyes are open, her cheeks are wet, and she is not moving.  
  
  
The reality hits him and he frowns, wiping the wet trail away from his sister’s corpse.  
  
  
How silly of him to forget that by taking her life, he was taking his own.  
  
  
Reluctantly, he pulls away from her, and he marvels at the sight. It’s poetic that they should die as they came into the world: naked, crying and entwined. Even in death, Cersei looks exquisite, a beautiful creature that he was lucky to hold close. She is still the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, even long after her heart has stopped and her tears have dried on her face. He could pretend that she is watching him now, as he reaches for the revolver from the first drawer of her bedside table. It’s small, but she never had big hands; her hands were just big enough to hold all that he is within her grip and never let go. In the end, that wasn’t much.  
  
  
He is strangely at peace, knowing judgment will be passed that will make them whole again, somewhere, in a way that they could never be in this reality. Jaime Lannister has never been afraid in his life, and when he pulls the trigger, the nose of the revolver against his temple, he is not afraid.  
  
  
He feels forgiven.  
  
  
Then, nothing.


End file.
